Painting Away Regrets, a Caribbean Antiromance

Abstract

In “The Last Stitch: A Praise Song for My Mother Who Mothered Me” (2010), Donnette Francis labels Caribbean antiromance writers as those who actively denounce the failures of the state with regard to sexual violence and other oppressions of the individual. Accordingly, this chapter draws upon Opal Palmer Adisa’s novel Painting Away Regrets (2011) in order to endorse the genre of Caribbean antiromance, whereby “neither familial home, national homeland, nor immigrant nation function as safe spaces of belonging” (Francis “Last” 161). Following Sara Ahmed’s concept of wonder (Cultural 178–183), which reports gender discourses taking distance from assimilated intimacies, Adisa creates spaces for resistance by rewriting gender and black diasporic identities. The concerned novel exudes this black feminist endeavor, exploring the possibilities of an Afro-Caribbean aesthetics from the bottom-up, and bringing the intimacies of Christine, its unapologetic main protagonist, into public view for further reflection and inquiry.